


Lambswool

by brigitttt



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cows, Farm Task Realism, Horses, Livestock Shows, M/M, Rodeos, Sheep, brief Jokaste/Damen, do I need to tag for horse pregnancy??, sorry I can't come up with better tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 16:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19872319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brigitttt/pseuds/brigitttt
Summary: Or, one spring and many after.A modern AU about ranches and farms and seasons. Laurent, a temporary hire for the sheep farm’s spring lambing; Damen, the second son on his family’s cattle ranch.





	Lambswool

**Author's Note:**

> Needed to take a break and try out a different sort of pacing, and this idea felt right. I hope you like it <3

Spring

It always starts in spring, don’t it, these things. Damen wears his second-oldest pair of jeans – the ones he’d worn when he won himself first prize in cow roping, that first year that Kastor hadn’t also competed in rodeo – and sets off on his mare to walk along the fence of the big field, then out to the hill slope where he can see the sunrise. 

The sheep farm back not a couple miles behind their ranch is full into lambing season. He’d listened to his Pa only last night, about how the farmhands the sheep farm hires for the extra help are always up to no good around their back cattle fences, but no evidence can be found when Damen passes by; not even a single footprint in the mud.

Damen’s well into the no-man’s-land of grass between their properties before he comes across a single sheep, fat and pregnant and on her side, bleating softly. He doesn’t know what he means to do when he gets off his horse, only pats his mare’s neck absentmindedly, getting a snuffle in return, and sees the bright fearful whites of the ewe’s eyes when he takes too many steps too close. A wordless shout comes from over the next rise and Damen shields his eyes with his hand to see who it is.

The man that comes is carrying a kit bag and wearing a distrustful scowl that he aims directly at Damen, but his hair is gleaming gold in the early morning sun and he carries himself with an assured gravity. Damen’s lips part in mild, enamoured surprise. Neither of them say a word as the man kneels near the back end of the ewe, fitting on long gloves and running a soft hand over her round, woolly belly. Damen averts his eyes in a manner even he can admit is kind of awkward when the gloves meander carefully to inspect the lamb’s progress. 

It doesn’t take long, but surely the man must be wondering why Damen’s sticking around for the whole show, as it were. He doesn’t rightly know himself, to be honest, except it’s still sunrise, and his horse is happily grazing, and he feels the urge to do something embarrassing, like introduce himself. Damen only looks back around when he hears the tiniest of bleats, and the man has stepped back, shucking his gloves as the new, darling, baby lamb nudges itself around to its mother’s teat. Damen lifts his gaze.

“Damen,” he says, and starts to bring his hand up to the brim of his hat only to realise he’s not wearing it. He turns the movement into a gesture over his shoulder. “I just came up from the cattle ranch. To see the sunrise.” It feels somewhat inadequate as far as explanations go.

“Laurent,” the man introduces in turn. “I came for the lambing.” His eyes are crystal blue like something out of fiction. 

Damen clears his throat. “How long are you around for, Laurent?” he says, and those blue eyes – that had been wandering, from Damen’s boots, to his horse, quick to the lamb, and then back slowly up Damen’s body – snap directly to his.

#

They end up reaching for each other, quietly, in that way that seems to unfold like petals and softly drop to the ground, all expected and cherished. They find each other most in the morning during sunrises, and sometimes in the late afternoons, and once, under the benevolent eye of the moon, they kiss, on cheeks and lips, on necks. On brave legs they walk and with solid arms they reach for each other.

#

The lambing season ends for the sheep farm at the end of spring itself, and by the time Damen makes his last sunrise trek over to the hill slope there are plenty of bouncing lambs traipsing around their mothers through the dewy grass. Laurent is waiting for him, on the ground with a lamb in his lap, feeding the thirsty little thing with a bottle of milk. His face is serene when he looks up at Damen, and Damen feels a lurch deep in his gut at how beautiful he is. He wants to hold Laurent so close to his chest that there’s no air left for either of them . . . and yet.

“I’ll be back,” Laurent whispers into the soft hairs behind Damen’s ear, just after he brushes the curls there with his finger. Damen hides his face in the soft cotton of Laurent’s shirt, and clutches at Laurent’s arm with a desperate grip. The lamb bleats plaintively in Laurent’s lap, and Damen gulps out a wet laugh, swiping at his eyes with his ever-dusty sleeve when he pulls back. He’s kneeling in front of Laurent’s crossed legs and it feels like the most natural thing, to yearn like a worshipper and pledge his faith to this shepherd and his lamb. 

* * *

Summer

Damen’s father works him harder than ever for the summer, a chance to earn his way back into his father’s good graces, and make up for all the times in the spring when he snuck away to the slope north of the big field during their own hard calving season. 

It’s a hell of a sweltering day when Kastor comes back to the ranch. He’s been away for nearly two years, doing some big job for the city council in the closest town, a fair few miles away. Damen shakes his head at the thought of withering away behind a desk, but when he douses his kerchief in trough water for the third time that afternoon, he doesn’t feel guilty wishing for air conditioning. 

Kastor strolls up in his old beige Stetson but is now sporting a matching suit. The only giveaway for his discomfort in the heat is his tie and top buttons, slightly loosened and undone to reveal the dark brown dip between his collarbones. Damen is particularly aware of the dirt caked on his own boots; he’d been helping one of the ranch hands dig new ditches all day.

Kastor asks him if he wants to take a ride with him around the property, and Damen grimaces. It’s not right to shirk the duties of the ranch to the hands, especially when Pa is getting too old now to do that sort of work himself, but Damen plays the expression off as a squint into the sun, and goes to the stables to gear up. He hasn’t seen his brother in a long time.

“Glad to see you’re keeping the ranch in good shape,” Kastor says, pulling on his reins a little too hard as they go around the corner of the west field, making his horse slow and toss its head in irritation. Kastor doesn’t notice, blithely patting the mane in front of him and smiling widely at Damen.

“I like the ranch,” Damen says inelegantly. He twists his mouth. “So I like keeping it in good shape.” 

“Of course you do! And that’s great,” says Kastor, and Damen suddenly feels like he needs to brace himself for bad news. His mare picks up on his tension and Damen tries to breathe and shush at her, nudging her on with his heels. “I know it’ll all be perfect for when I take over from Pa.”

Damen can’t control his shock, whipping his head around, nearly dislodging his own hat. “What? But I –” he starts, but that’s not a sentence he seems to be able to finish. He can’t even form the thought that carries on from it until late that night, when he’s only half under the bed sheet and still sweating through his briefs. 

Damen had thought, when Kastor had left the rodeos, had bought those political books and those suits, had gone off the ranch to the city – well. Damen had thought, in the smallest of hopes, that the ranch might be his. Pa will only find it a nice surprise that his eldest son wants to take over the ranch when he fully retires, and Damen will just have to be supportive. He has nothing else except the ranch, and maybe owning it all isn’t really what he wants, anyways. Maybe Kastor’s doing him a favour.

It’s just like Kastor to make big plans without telling him, ain’t it. And surely, Damen can’t blame Kastor for only doing what’s in his nature.

#

One of the new calves gets caught up in a fence when they’re in the middle of moving pastures, and Damen volunteers to free it while the other ranch hands get the rest of the herd going. Its head and left shoulder and foreleg have gone through the tensile wire, and its neck is stuck at a low angle. 

“I know, baby,” Damen soothes when the calf lets out a sad noise, not quite old enough to be a real moo. “You only wanted the greener grass.”

It takes some maneuvering, but he sets the calf free in no time. His handling of the calf’s fetlock as he moves it back through the wires of the fence earns him a confused lick on his own sweaty wrist, and Damen giggles out a laugh, smoothing a hand down the calf’s flank with gentle pats. It scampers away towards the right gate when Damen’s done, and he takes a moment to look past the fence and out at the stretch of no-man’s-land that he hasn’t visited in months. His sunrises of late have been spent maintaining the haying equipment, almost paranoid in his oil and gear checks before each day that they’re used. He couldn’t bear it if anything went wrong on his account.

A couple sheep come over the rise in the distance and Damen’s heart swells without permission, expecting bright blond hair to follow after. He can allow himself this, he thinks, just brief fantasies of holding Laurent again, those soft cotton shirts and his smooth skin. The same calluses on his palms that Damen has. His smirk of a smile and his bright blue eyes. 

His mare’s first and only foal had had blue eyes like that. Pa had come out of the foaling stall and declared ‘ _glass eyes!’_ to the entire ranch, and Damen had grinned with joy, just elated at the prospect of a new foal on the ranch at all, until Kastor had slapped a hand on his back and congratulated him with _‘now he’ll sell even better at auction.’_ The foal had sold, though, for a significant sum, but Damen hadn’t wanted to go to the livestock show that year. He’d heard the selling price from Kastor the next morning.

Damen wonders if Laurent is happy right now, or if he’s also looking across a wide field, holding a little hope in his heart.

* * *

Fall

Haying ends easily enough on the ranch, and the weather’s finally starting to cool just a little. Damen has managed to scrape himself back into Pa’s good books, after all his hard work in the summer, but his duties continue to pile up. He tries not to think about how Kastor spends more of his time in the ranch house, excusing himself into the office with things like “the books,” as if he still knows any better about how to run the place than before he went to work for city council. Put a shovel in his hand and get a bit of dirt on those nice suit pants, is what Damen thinks, angrily and to himself, multiple times a day. Then he’ll know what it is to run a ranch.

Damen shoves all of his mean-spirited energy into renovating the north end of the stables, and rewiring the fence on some of the pastures. He enlists the help of some of the ranch hands, but the seasonal guys are already starting to peel off, going back to their home ranches now that it’s not so busy. There are still enough people left to finish getting the calves weaned, and every time Damen needs a break from his aching work, he’ll go to help them. The calf he saved from the fence has already been tagged for staying, but he doesn’t let himself name it, only watches the fenceline, the cows rubbing noses with their calves through the gaps.

#

The local rodeo is held each fall, and Damen has been competing in it since he was nine. His earliest achievements had been in gentler things like mutton busting and goat tying, followed by a swift graduation to steer riding and finally to bareback bronc riding. He’d practically traced out each footstep that Kastor had taken before him.

Nowadays, he sticks to the roping events, admittedly scared off of the rough stock competition after getting thrown so hard from the horse he’d both dislocated his shoulder and fractured his scapula. He’d been twenty-one and an idiot, and Pa had asked him in the hospital afterward if Damen truly thought that _‘looking like a fresh piece of shit was really worth the ranch’_. Damen had been too drugged up on painkillers to comprehend the real meaning of his father’s words at the time, but Kastor had been the one to drive him back home after discharge, explaining in serious tones how being physically able to work the ranch was much more important than being able to hold on to a crazy horse for eight seconds. 

Damen had met Nikandros for the first time at the rodeo when they were both fourteen, and where Damen had gone for events based on wild strength, Nik had dived into the world of agility. He had made his own joke about being too big to be a real derby jockey so this was the next best thing, and Damen had taken an instant liking to him, to the point where each subsequent rodeo had found them nearly inseparable. Nik greets Damen this year with a hug around the shoulders and a rough tousling of his curly hair, and Damen leaves his bitter feelings alone for the first time in a while. He takes as much of a deep breath of sawdust and sweat and animal smell as he can handle, and lets it out at the same time as he pats at Nik’s shoulder.

They come third in the team roping, graciously accepting their consolation bouquets with smiles, and waving at all the kids in the audience. It’s nice, now, to be able to do one fun event and then watch the juniors and the women for the rest of the day. Damen feels so much less pressure now that it’s just him and Nik and lots of funnel cake. 

“Got any plans for the livestock show?” Nik asks, once they’ve watched the rodeo queen get crowned and are beginning their walk back to the parking lot. 

“Only the regular auction,” Damen says, taking his hat off briefly to wipe his sleeve over his brow. “Don’t think any of the ranch girls had plans to show the cows or anything this year, and we don’t think Pa’s well enough to go down anyway.”

“Thought Kastor might’a worked something up, seeing as how he’s back with the ranch and all,” Nik says magnanimously, and Damen snorts.

“Only thing the man’s worked on is _paper_ ,” Damen spits, but then catches the look Nik gives him. “Sorry. S’just all he cares about is profit – not that I _don’t_ want the ranch to make money,” he adds, with a hand darting to Nik’s elbow. They’ve reached Damen’s truck now. Nik nods in assurance. 

“I just – he’s been helpful, I guess,” Damen equivocates, losing steam. “I just wanna know he still cares.”

“I know, Damen,” Nik says, pulling him into another hug before bracing both his hands on Damen’s shoulders at arm’s length. He looks like he’s about to say something more, but then seems to dismiss it, like a fly in the air. He pats Damen’s cheek goodnaturedly instead, and says “See you at the show.”

#

For a split second, Damen thinks it’s Laurent coming through the doors of the auction hall, carrying a clipboard and wearing a pair of white leather boots, but when he looks properly, she’s a woman, bleach blonde and sharp-cheeked and walking his way. 

Maybe his mind is still clinging to the dream of Laurent, or maybe it’s just his upbringing, but Damen straightens from where he was leaning with forearms on the railing and raises his hand to tip his hat as she passes by. She flicks him a look and the corner of her pink lips twitches upwards, but then she’s gone, and Damen feels something bubble up in his chest.

* * *

Winter

Jokaste wants to breed his mare. She’d talked non-stop to Damen about what a beauty his horse was when she had visited the ranch, asking questions about the first foal and the mare’s health while she fed her slices of apple, getting right into the stable and stroking over her neck. Jokaste had listed a couple of stallions she knows will be good, and had advised that they start keeping the lights on in the stable for longer so the mare’s cycle can adjust. Damen knows his horse is certainly healthy enough for it, and not too old, and he finds it difficult to resist Jokaste’s ideas; by the end of it, he’s not quite sure why he felt the need to resist in the first place.

Even Kastor thinks it’s a good idea, but Damen doesn’t necessarily care for his opinion on it. Jokaste had toured around the ranch, her long hair swishing in a ponytail tucked through the back of a baseball cap, and had smiled at everything in sight. She cooed over the cows, admired the newly renovated stables, and fed bits and pieces to each of the horses in turn. A regular farm girl. Damen had hesitated in taking her to the ranch office, childishly trying to keep something away from Kastor, but decided that it was the proper thing to do. Jokaste had kept on smiling, white teeth gleaming, and shook Kastor’s hand with clean manicured fingers.

She’d been hovering in Damen’s periphery since the auction at the livestock show, and when her brother’s ranch had bought a number of this year’s calves, she’d come along to observe the loading of stock into the transport, and had given her business card to Damen by slipping it into the front pocket of his work shirt, her hand delicately sliding past the opening of Damen’s jacket and brushing his chest. He had been struck frozen by it all, a little dumb with the prospect of what she was endeavouring to make clear. Now that his mare’s going to be pregnant for eleven months at Jokaste’s bidding, it only seems right that they should become closer. 

#

The stallion they lead onto the ranch and into an adjoining room of the stables sure is a beauty. Its dark brown, nearly black coat glistens with each movement of muscle under skin, almost iridescent. Damen has to laugh a little when he goes to lead his mare in; she’s a pretty dapple grey, but admittedly a little more plain than this supermodel of a horse they’re setting her up with. Damen leaves Jokaste and the stud handlers alone for the process, keeping the other horses company and trusting that he’ll be alerted if anything goes south. 

In the end it’s a smooth morning. He treats Jokaste and the stud handlers to late lunch before they head off, and Jokaste delays her departure off the ranch by exactly a second, enough time to press her lips to Damen’s jaw.

#

Damen is out on a perimeter check of the ranch, riding his mare as softly as she’ll let him, when he realises he hasn’t thought about Laurent in months. He’s not sure if he feels guilty about this; it’s not like Damen was the one who left, and he’s been busy with work on the ranch all year and spending time with Jokaste, who has been around more now that his mare has been confirmed to be pregnant. There’s also been Kastor’s increased and unquestioned presence at the ranch. Damen’s loyal to the cows and the land, not whoever owns it, but with the looming prospect of Pa’s full retirement, he can’t stop himself from wishing that his own brother would just disappear again. It’s an awful thought, and it makes Damen feel worse every time he thinks it, but it’s sharply true. He wishes it weren’t.

These all seem like solid reasons for his momentary forgetfulness, and Damen knows that when he sees Laurent again – soon, it’s almost spring, soon – that things will feel more tangible between them again. Damen reaches the gate for the big field and cuts across without going into the no-man’s-land; it feels like sacred ground now, one he shouldn’t touch until he can see Laurent on the other side.

* * *

Spring

Pa shares the news at dinner that the sheep farm’s hired temporary help again this year, and the very next morning Damen is off on his mare to see the sunrise. He distracts himself, stroking the smooth flank of his mare and feeding her a couple carrots for her patience, and she snuffles every time he gazes off to the north and accidentally lets his hand drop from her muzzle. 

Damen waits for as long as he can before he has to start work, and has an impulse to leave something here, his kerchief, maybe, just to make sure Laurent knows Damen hasn’t forgotten. To make sure for himself that this was real. He doesn’t do it, but it’s a close thing.

As if to make up for it, Jokaste spends the entire day at the ranch, mostly assessing the condition of Damen’s mare, but also helping him with a difficult calving in the late afternoon. She’s got dirt and gunk on her arms by the end of it, and Damen is impressed with her composure, even when it had seemed like the calf wouldn’t make it. She looks pleased with herself though, and scrubs off with the rest of them in the big barn sink, soap lathering up to her elbows. 

Damen offers Jokaste a late dinner, as thanks for her hard work, and when they carefully lay themselves down in Damen’s bed afterwards, he notices the way she bites her cheek from the inside of her mouth, her lips twisting before she kisses him. It’s impossibly nice to be able to run his hands down the back of a creature that doesn’t moo, and Jokaste spikes him with a dirty look when he can’t quite stifle his laughter at the thought. She seems to forgive him enough, though, laying her head on his chest and her hand on his belly when it’s much later in the night.

#

Maybe Pa was right after all, about the untrustworthy sheep farm hands. Damen had been woken up by one of the ranch guys to hear that a substantial patch of fence wire for the big field had been broken overnight. Luckily none of the cows had been in it, so there was no need to track down escapees or mark down a loss in stock, but Damen takes it upon himself to go and fix it. He’s setting a good example for the ranch as a whole, and needs some space away from people for a while.

Damen gets so caught up in his work on the fence that he doesn’t notice Laurent come up the rise of the slope in no-man’s-land and over to the fence until the man is suddenly blocking out the sun. Damen jolts back in surprise, and then leaps up, disregarding the wire in between them as he captures Laurent in a hug. They have matching smiles when they both pull back, and one of Laurent’s hands has snuck under the unfinished wire to settle on Damen’s hip, and it feels sublime.

“You’re back,” Damen says like a dolt, but Laurent nods his head, cheeks blushing.

“I got hired on for the whole year this time,” he says with a beaming smile. His hair is radiant in the spring sun. “It won’t be just for the lambing, Damen,” and then Laurent’s other hand is landing on Damen’s cheek and it’s bliss, just perfect, to be held and felt and seen by Laurent after all this time. To kiss him with all the tenderness of a blade of grass.

They end up fixing the length of broken fence together, and Laurent tells him about his time away at agriculture school. They finish just in time for Laurent to get alerted by his two-way radio that there’s a ewe needing extra assistance further afield. Damen links his fingers with Laurent’s through the newly repaired fence wire before they part, and wishes with his whole heart for something he can’t decide what to name.

# 

Damen finds Laurent most mornings again just before sunrise, which means it’s earlier and earlier each day. He’s used to the long hours, but his mind is always taken up just a little by thoughts of what Laurent might be up to, when they’re not together. Damen asks him one morning in stilted words and between strokes of his thumb over Laurent’s cheek, whether he is just as consumed by this thing between them as Damen is. Laurent only hums back and closes his eyes, saying that the sheep are the most important thing in his life right now. He laughs at Damen’s expression after, and plucks a kiss from his lips, whispering ‘ _but you are a distractingly close second’_ into the air between them.

Damen always has to return to the ranch soon after the sun comes up, so that he doesn’t miss as many duties as he had last year. Laurent lays affection after affection onto Damen’s mare, who utterly basks in the attention, and Damen realizes that Laurent doesn’t know she’s pregnant; it’s much too early for her to show.

“Is it her first?” Laurent asks, and Damen shakes his head. Laurent strokes a pale hand down her neck, then along her nose. “Why now?”

That’s the question, isn’t it. Damen doesn’t really have an answer, and Laurent pins him with a single glance. His gaze doesn’t move while Damen explains the situation to the best of his ability, about the auction and Jokaste and the stallion, but his eyes do narrow as it progresses. Damen lays a hand on his horse’s rump when he finally stops talking; he needs a point of contact with something to steady himself.

“It sounds like she’s using you, Damen,” Laurent says, quiet yet firm. A decisive opinion.

Damen doesn’t know how to respond, so all that comes out is a gruff “Maybe she is. She did sleep with me.” It’s the wrong thing to say, and Damen feels his throat close, a belated attempt to take the words back. Laurent pulls away from Damen and his horse in a discernibly chilly manner, his expression suddenly closed off and distant, and Damen forgets that he can run after him until it’s too late.

#

Damen always hates the branding part of calving season. It’s hard to bear, watching young animals you helped to birth get fitted with a hot iron scar. Someone has to bear it, though. That’s just the way these things work.

* * *

Summer

Damen has to amass a petition of ranchhands before Kastor agrees to shell out the money for new irrigation pipes, and it’s infuriating as all hell when the pipes that finally get delivered are shoddy and unusable. Damen struggles to restrain himself from punching something when he finds out that Kastor hadn’t consulted any of their replacement specifications or suggestions when he’d bought them, only found the closest material to what he thought was required and washed his hands of it. 

When Damen confronts his brother, tucked away in the ranch office and smoking a cigarette in the chair behind the desk, Kastor only smiles, and dares Damen to complain to Pa. Their father is ill right now, and supposed to be retiring fully next spring, but Kastor knows this, and spits the dare in Damen’s face anyways. Damen shoves Kastor’s boots off from where they’re resting on the corner of the old oak desk, and wishes the right words would emerge from his brain sometime soon, stomping out of the ranch house in a fuming rage. 

He spends the rest of the day moving the cattle between pastures, falling back into himself with disappointment and self-disgust. At dusk, he sees a couple sheep crest the hill in the distance, followed by a figure with blond hair, and Damen sighs out a heavy breath that could shake the world.

#

The halfway mark of his mare’s pregnancy arrives in what feels like no time at all. She really looks round now, and Damen is scared to ride her, only leading her out into a free pasture to exercise her now and again. Jokaste insists that horses are fine to be ridden for at least a couple more months, but Damen knows how big he is, and doesn’t want to risk it. It’s easier this way, even if he has to use another horse for work. He feeds his mare apples and sweet oats and all the things she loves, and sometimes he doesn’t feel so tired anymore.

Jokaste reaches for him one afternoon, the first time since spring, simply running the back of her fingers high over his cheekbone.

“You look exhausted, Damen,” she says, and he can’t argue with that. Jokaste traces her fingers down to his lips. “What do you need?”

Damen stands in his mare’s stable, boots covered in mud and hay, wearing whichever jeans were closest to his hands when he woke up, holding his hat in one hand and the wood of the stable door in the other, and he has to make a choice. The millisecond it takes for his eyes to blink stretches out into eons, and all he can see is the way Laurent’s eyes crease at the corners when he smiles. 

Jokaste is staring at Damen with a patient face, but her expression stiffens infinitesimally when he says, “I need you to tell me something.”

She gives him a delicately wary look, but nods. “Anything.”

“Was it all for the foal, Jokaste?” he says, and when she bites her lip in hesitation, he feels more exhausted than ever.

#

Damen takes one of the big geldings out past the big field in the morning, before sunrise, and then walks it north until he can spot Laurent, a gleam of blond hair in the dim pre-dawn light. He hops off the saddle in one big motion, back in his rodeo form, and runs towards him, boots slipping only a little on the dew.

He’s breathless when he reaches Laurent. “I agreed to give it to her,” he says, quick on an exhale.

Laurent’s startled look composes itself before he asks, “Give what?”

“The foal, it’ll be hers.” Damen swipes a sweaty hand over his shirt, trying to calm his breathing. He doesn’t need to specify who.

“Oh,” Laurent says simply, mouth dropping open.

“I was so stupid, Laurent, I don’t know what I was thinking,” and Damen feels like collapsing, hands braced on his knees, all the weight of this one long summer on his back. “I’m so sorry. I really do want this.”

“This?” Laurent asks, and when Damen dares to look up it’s to pink cheeks and a look of such tightly contained longing that Damen’s heart bursts from his chest.

“ _You._ ”

A sheep bleats, off in the distance, and Laurent turns his head towards it. Damen stares at the long line of Laurent’s neck until he straightens up. Laurent ducks his head, running a hand over the back of his neck; it’s already getting warm, the sun starting its incline.

“You make it real hard for me, Damen,” Laurent says, almost in a huff.

“I’m sorry.” 

“I know.” Laurent says it quickly, naturally. He finally meets Damen’s eyes, and he has a look of hard assurance. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Damen’s stomach clenches. “But –” 

“That’s a promise,” says Laurent, and Damen knows, by the time he gets back to his horse, footsteps solid across the field, that it _was_ a promise. Neither a dismissal nor an absolution; just a guarantee. Laurent will be there.

* * *

Fall 

Damen competes in the rodeo with Nik again, but it’s especially nice to do it knowing Laurent is watching from the stands this year. He accidentally lets himself get distracted looking over to find him, wants to see if he’s enjoying it, but only sees Laurent’s exasperated face as Damen tries and fails to rope around the steer’s horns. They come in second this year though, despite the distractions, and Damen and Nik clink their little silver medals together when they meet up with Laurent behind the stands. Damen laughs when Laurent rolls his eyes at them, and Nik suggests they get beers and frybread to celebrate.

It smarts a little, to know how far away they both are from that first spring when they collided together and kept holding until they couldn’t. This feels decidedly not as good, Damen thinks. 

They eat frybread and Damen has to bite down on his laughter when Laurent’s hands get so greasy he unconsciously holds them up by his chest, fingers spread, until he can find a napkin. He invites Laurent to the livestock show and they walk around the wood chip and sawdust floor petting the noses of all the draft horses, and he keeps his hands to himself. Laurent is _here_ finally, and all Damen can do is watch. He doesn’t need to ravage the man in the middle of the cow auction, but he does crave a careful placing of his hand on Laurent’s upper arm. A brushing of cornsilk hair behind Laurent’s ear. 

Laurent laughs so much it’s infectious; his eyes crinkle up and everything, and Damen has no option than to join with his own laugh when Laurent points at the especially fluffy silkie chicken on show and cracks up. When Damen turns to Nikandros to make sure he’s seen the first-place fluffhead, Nik is looking at him with a curious expression on the verge of a genial smile. Damen throws it right back at him, turning away before he can do something like blush, which he surely will do regardless. He knows what it looks like, and he knows what Nikandros sees, and he can admit that it’s probably not the best sight. It’s all he has, though.

#

“What does the sheep farm think of us?” Damen asks. They’re lying in the no-man’s-land field close to sundown, limbs spread like starfish, heads close but not touching.

“Us?” Laurent whispers. His voice has all the timbre of long grass brushing together in the wind, and Damen shivers a little. He clears his throat. 

“The ranch.” Damen matches Laurent’s tone, and shifts on the ground, sure his butt’s getting wet from the grass somehow. Laurent only hums in consideration.

“I mean, do they – would they ever, uh,” Damen says, and in the time it takes for him to realize he sounds like he’s about to accuse their neighbours of destruction of property, Laurent rolls onto his front, arms tucked under his chest, and peers down at Damen. He stops talking.

“Would the farmhands ever cut the wire on your fences with ill intent?” Laurent says, with a sigh and no small amount of skepticism. Damen blushes. “No, of course not, Damen. What the hell,” he says.

“Sorry, I –” Damen’s apology starts, but then Laurent cuts him off with “But would they sneak into the ranch and dye your cows pink? It’s been considered once or twice.”

Damen laughs. “Premeditated cow colouring? Laurent, I’m appalled,” he says, and Laurent’s shoulders bounce with a giggle of his own. Damen rolls onto his side with the intention of watching Laurent laugh, but his eyes snag on the clouds, darker than they should be even in the twilight. Laurent follows his gaze.

“A storm?” Laurent asks, but Damen doesn’t need to answer. They heave themselves up, and Damen rests on one knee for a bit, wary of the one that cracks now when he straightens it. He places a palm on his thigh, and just before he stands, he catches Laurent looking at him, eyes darkened in the shadow of the clouds, but expression open. 

Laurent lets Damen cup his cheek in his hand once they’re both upright, but angles away when Damen leans down to kiss him, so that it lands just under his eye. He can feel the fluttering of Laurent’s eyelashes against his lips. 

#

The storm is so bad that everyone on the ranch has to retreat into the storm cellar just in case; who knows what the wind might whip up. Damen’s not one for praying, but he does hold every hope in his heart that no matter what the storm throws at them, no one will get hurt. He thinks about his mare, locked in the barn with extra hay packed against all of the walls. He thinks about Laurent up at the sheep farm too, likely hunkered down in their own cellar. 

Pa listens closely to the high powered radio and at one point assures everyone that the experts say it’s not that bad of a storm. They’re still heavily encouraged to stay in shelter though, so Damen’s doubtful that their assurances mean much. He squints his eyes shut and sits with his back to the wall, and hopes.

The radio announces the passing of the storm sometime close to dawn, and at first, Damen is so relieved to see the barn still standing that he thinks the ranch came out pretty much unscathed. It’s only when his Pa comes up behind him and grips his elbow that Damen turns towards the pastures, and sees the devastating wreck of absolutely all of the fences. The wire is snapped to pieces, gnarly and twisted up from each post, rendered into impotent bones that stick up from the grass like old sunken gravestones. Damen’s heart sinks deep into the earth, as if retreating back to the storm cellar, hoping to emerge again and find it was just a nightmare. 

A final, terrible thought comes to him, distantly through the fog of shock; potential sheep farm pranksters are no equal for the sheer ignorance of trusting his brother to buy the right kind of wire.

* * *

Winter 

The aftermath is harrowing. Never has a winter felt more cold and desolate than this one, as the ranch attempts to scrape itself back into some kind of working order. The cattle are all fed by hand anyways, since the grass in the fields wouldn’t be enough this time of year, but they still get antsy, having to wait around in their barn for days on end. A lot of Damen’s time in the days immediately after the storm is spent walking through the herd, making sure that none were actually injured. He doesn’t make it out to the no-man’s-land for six days. It would mean he’d have to walk through the wreckage of the the big field, anyways.

Pa pulls all of the strings he’s accumulated over the years to get an emergency order of reliable tensile fence wire delivered as soon as possible. He’d only watched with keen eyes when Damen had gathered up all the loops of Kastor’s junk wire and dumped them alongside the other ruined pieces in the growing pile of trash to drive out to the landfill. Not a lot of talking went on during the clean up that week, but he’d seen Pa walk steadily with his cane into the ranch office with Kastor one evening, his mouth set in a grim line.

The one morning Damen finally makes it out past the big field, or at least past the markers showing where it used to be, he sees Laurent waiting for him, hands bunched up in the pockets of his big work coat. Damen’s so relieved to see him standing there, even after he’d stood him up for six days, even after he’d forgotten about him and had slept with Jokaste and had told him about it and had scraped up a miserable apology with all the desperation in his heart. Laurent’s there, accepting Damen’s slumped embrace with a fair hand to his back, running it up and down the shoulder blade that Damen had fractured so many years ago when Damen lets out his first sob. Laurent is there, letting Damen cry into the collar of his jacket, letting him close his eyes until his breaths turn steady against the skin of Laurent’s neck. 

Laurent places the lightest of kisses on each of Damen’s eyelids, his hands bracketing his face, and then rests their foreheads together.

“I’m here,” he says, and Damen feels himself melt a little under the weak winter sun. 

#

One morning, on his way out to the stables to check on his mare, Damen sees a beige suit disappear around the corner of the ranch house. Damen’s chest tightens; it’s Kastor, obviously, but once he rounds the corner himself he sees it’s also a taxi cab and suitcases. It’s a surprise, but Damen thinks that maybe it shouldn’t be.

Just as Damen is entertaining the thought of sneaking back around the corner and forgetting he ever saw anything, Kastor turns around, his Stetson clutched in front of his stomach. He looks startled at being caught, Damen thinks, but maybe it’s also the accumulation of poor decisions and the stress of being at fault, finally pulled taut. This is the look of a man at the end of his rope.

“It’s too much, Damen,” Kastor says, holding his hands out meekly in entreaty, ever the politician. “You understand.”

Damen doesn’t say anything, already accepting his brother’s evasive tendencies. He crosses his arms and steels his expression, and watches the taxi drive away. When he checks back in at the ranch house later, in time for his father’s breakfast, he announces Kastor’s departure in detached tones, his gaze firmly fixed on the pile of extra placemats on the table. Pa must have known, though, because all he does is exhale slowly, eat another spoonful of grits, and pin Damen with a heavy, expectant glance. Damen spends the rest of the day in a haze, building new pasture fences until sundown.

#

Damen’s washing up the dishes from dinner late one night when a ranch hand rushes in, one hand still hanging on to the doorframe as if he’s ready to bolt back outside. Damen shuts off the water and runs with him to the stables.

The ranchhand had been closing everything up for the night when he noticed Damen’s mare was more restless than usual, and by the time he’d finished with everything in the stables and was about to leave, her water had broken. Damen nods along as they jog to the door of the foaling stall, peering over to see his mare on her side.

His first call to Jokaste goes straight to voicemail, and, lacking some logic, he tries her number again immediately after, just in case. It doesn’t go through. He lets himself into the stall to place a hand on his mare’s neck and dials Laurent’s number.

“Towels, bucket, gloves,” he lists in Damen’s ear. “You grew up on a ranch, it’s not like you haven’t done this before.” It’s a gentle sort of chiding, which Damen appreciates.

“It’s just –” Damen starts, and he has to swallow down a lump in his throat. “I want everything to be okay.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Laurent says, and then, as if he can really sense Damen’s desperation through the phone, “Do you need me to stay on the line?”

Damen has a brief moment of excruciating love for this man, but then he forces himself to say “No, it’s alright, just be quick,” and hangs up to the faint sounds of Laurent’s hurried breathing as he likely starts his trip across the field.

He’s such a professional, Damen thinks, when he sees Laurent with his long gloves on, announcing that he can see the foal’s snout, and later, when he’s urging the mare into the last couple pushes. Laurent tells him to clean the membranes while he dips the umbilicus, and when a light hand lands on Damen’s rounded shoulder as he quietly towels down the foal’s head, he suddenly knows that this is the way he wants things to be.

Jokaste arrives in a flurry, and to her credit, doesn’t lead with excuses or fuss. It’s only after she’s helped with the placenta that she shakes Laurent’s hand, and with the stress and the late hour Damen snorts out a laugh thinking of the gunk sealing their handshake like some sort of animal birthing accord. He’s met with two identical looks of exasperation.

They troop out of the stall to make room when the little silver-black thing stands on long wobbly legs within an hour. Jokaste is grinning, clearly pleased with her part in all this, and goes to wash her hands in the sink. Damen folds his arms on top of the stall door and lays his head down on top of them, longing for sleep but too amped up at the same time to truly succumb to it. 

“Thank you,” Damen tells Laurent quietly on an exhale, and his heart stutters when he looks over to see such a deep look of understanding in return. 

“You’re welcome,” Laurent says, barely glancing back into the stall when the foal gently bumps into the door by accident.

Damen’s mouth opens again before he can think about it, and says “I’m taking over the ranch in the spring, Laurent,” and when Laurent only raises an eyebrow he follows it with “How long are you around for at sheep farm?”

Laurent smiles at him like he knew the question was coming, and leans into Damen’s side until morning.

* * *

Spring

The ranch girls are enormously pleased with the foal, a clumsy boy with too-long legs that traipses in circles around the ranch while following his mother. Damen’s told them time and again that it’s only for a short while more, and then Jokaste will take him, but the girls insist on taking as many phone-videos as possible in their free time, and sending them all to Damen at the end of the day. He shows them in batches to Laurent, secretly pleased that the girls care so much. Damen wonders out loud to him one night when they’re laying in bed together if he should buy a foal for the ranch this year, and Laurent only smiles knowingly and kisses the front of his shoulder.

Damen’s taking a break in between calvings to spend time with the foal too, handling and haltering and eventually starting to lead him around a small pen. Laurent meets him out there one day, hopping onto the lowest bar of the fence to lean and place a kiss on Damen’s cheek. He holds his hand out to the colt, and then to the mare when she ambles over too.

“Got a call from the woman at the farm, and she accepted the offer we made for twenty-five lambs,” Laurent says, stepping back down from the fence. “I expected her to haggle it up at least one more time but I think she’s about to retire anyways, so we timed this well.”

“ _You_ timed it well,” Damen says. He lets go of the lead to let the colt scamper over to his mother. 

“I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but . . .” Laurent says airily, and Damen grins. 

“You look good,” he says quietly, like a lovesick idiot, and Laurent rolls his eyes at him, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear. “I love that you’re here.”

“I love that you’re getting sheep on the ranch,” Laurent replies smoothly, but he places his hand over Damen’s on the fence railing. 

“I love – ow!” Damen pulls his hand up to clutch at his own chest in shock, and the foal jumps lithely in the air like he’s laughing, and trots off to his mother again. 

Damen checks to make sure all his fingers are still there but gets distracted at Laurent’s bright laughter, his creased eyes and wide smile, and Damen lets out an embarrassed laugh of his own before tugging on Laurent’s shoulder. Damen kisses Laurent’s forehead, and then the apple of his cheek, and he’s so glad it’s spring again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at brigitttt (personal) and/or brigittttoo (side with writing), and also on twitter @brigitttt_ . Comments are much appreciated, thank you for reading!


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